Euclid Space Telescope Captures First Images of the Cosmos
The Euclid space telescope, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), has successfully taken its first images of stars and galaxies in infrared light. Designed to explore some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, Euclid aims to create the largest-ever 3D map of the sky.
The spacecraft’s two instruments, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) and the visible-light camera (VIS), captured the preliminary test images during its journey to the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, located 1 million miles away from Earth. These images were a testament to the telescope’s capabilities, showcasing scintillating starry views.
Giuseppe Racca, Euclid project manager at ESA, expressed his excitement, stating, “After more than 11 years of designing and developing Euclid, it’s exhilarating and enormously emotional to see these first images”. Racca added that the fully calibrated Euclid will eventually observe billions of galaxies, creating an unprecedented 3D map of the sky.
Euclid will spend the next two months testing and calibrating its instruments before embarking on a six-year survey of approximately one-third of the sky. Its wide-field and infrared cameras will enable it to record data from a section of the sky more than 100 times bigger than NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Reiko Nakajima, Euclid VIS instrument scientist, expressed her delight at seeing galaxies and stellar clusters in the test images, saying, “It is beautiful to look at, and a joy to do so with the people we’ve worked together with for so long”.
The unexpected presence of sunlight in the images produced by the visible-light camera, VIS, took the team by surprise. However, as long as Euclid remains oriented in a specific way, there will be no light contamination in subsequent images.
Euclid’s NISP instrument will capture images of galaxies in infrared light, providing measurements that map the distance of each galaxy. William Gillard, Euclid NISP instrument scientist, described each new image as leaving him “utterly amazed”.
The mission’s primary objective is to study the cosmic mysteries of the universe, particularly dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, believed to make up at least 85% of the total matter in the universe, has never been directly detected. By studying dark matter and dark energy, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of the universe’s composition, the nature of gravity, and how the expansion of the universe has changed over time.
Euclid’s ability to see in near-infrared light, similar to the James Webb Space Telescope, also opens the possibility of discovering previously unseen objects within our Milky Way galaxy.
Named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, the telescope will create a catalog of approximately 1.5 billion galaxies and the stars within them. This data will include details such as each galaxy’s shape, mass, and rate of stars created per year. Euclid’s observations will provide valuable insights into the evolution of the universe over the past 10 billion years.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher expressed confidence in the mission, saying, “I have full confidence that the team behind the mission will succeed in using Euclid to reveal so much about the 95% of the Universe that we currently know so little about”.
As Euclid continues its journey through the cosmos, scientists eagerly await the groundbreaking discoveries and insights it will provide into the mysteries of the universe.